For the past 20 years the eating of piping hot or very warm food dishes both in restaurants and at home has become more and more popular. Such dishes include pizza, most of the Italian dishes, Chinese dishes, sizzling steaks and chops, and numerous of the specially prepared potatoes. Most of these dishes or hot foods are spooned out of the original pots or pans in which they are cooked and are served in china or pottery dishes or plates sometimes requiring additional serving dishes of larger diameter, and in some instances serving trays for handling by the housewife or the waitress for holding the piping hot dishes during the eating process. A few of such hot foods, such as pizza and specially prepared potatoes, are usually served in the pans or casserole cooking utensils in which they are cooked or super-heated. In such cases the cooking pans with the food therein must be placed upon rather larger plates or dishes to facilitate handling and service and positioning of the hot dishes on a table for eating. In some few instances special trays of heat-insulating material have been provided to loosely accommodate the original cooking pan with the food therein.
In all the instances referred to, great dissipation of heat of the prepared food occurs during the serving and eating of the same, so that the hopeful and desired high temperature of the food is rapidly lost from the time it is placed on the table for eating.
While two or three of the prior art devices have shown a special insulated tray for nesting a specially designed single cooling pan, there has been no suggestion to my knowledge in the prior art of the combination of an invertible multi-functional holder-server combined with at least a pair of differently dimensioned alternatively useable metal cooking pans each of which may be received and sufficiently insulated during service and eating of the piping hot dish.